Zarah presenting the latest updates on her Solanum pennellii genomes at #SOL2024 - now a pan-epigenome thanks to Nanopore sequencing.

Final remark for this wonderful & amazing #SOL2024 led by Prof. Ezura and with the tireless help of Dr. Sugimoto. Prof. Ezura pass the honor to Dr. Giuliano & Dr. Ercolano who are announcing #SOLRUB2025, a joint meeting between Solanaceae & Rubicaceae communities in Torino, Italy on 22-26 Sept. 2025

Big thanks to all the #SOL2024 volunteers for their hard work during the conference! 🙏

Six prices for wonderful posters made by students attending the #SOL2024. Congratulations to all of them for their excellent job, and especially to Misaki Kobayashi for her first prize 🎉🎉🎉

Silvia Manrique presents at #SOL2024 her work in #eggplant flowering under #abiotic_stress. Eggplant displays functional andromonoecy. Eggplant flowers appear in clusters. They use Micromel as eggplant model with early flowering. Hormone signaling were upregulated in a RNAseq with heat stress exp.

Do you want know about the molecular mechanisms that define the #tomato #fruit_shape? Esther van der Knaap at #SOL2024 is talking about several genes involved in this trait, specially ovate gene and the OFP members.

Lazaro Peres opens the last day of the #SOL2024 in Tsukuba with an invited presentation about #insect-resistant #tomatoes and its natural variation. This resistance is based on #trichome-derived compounds such as #acylsugars. Tomato juvenile leaves have type IV trichomes.

Presentation at the #SOL2024 by Esteban Burbano from @ibmcp.bsky.social. He is talking about the #carotenoid and ABA biosynthesis in different #tomato tissues. GGPPS and PSY isoforms interact in a complex regulatory mechanism with compensatory balance between the different members.

Yoshiyuki Tanaka opens the 3rd day at #SOL2024 with a “hot” presentation about #capsaicin biosynthesis in #pepper. 2 proteins are responsible for its synthesis: VAMT and PUN1. Allele variation on these genes produces different content in capsaicin and capsacinoid, and different #pungency.

Francisco Vázquez Prol from @ibmcp.bsky.social is presenting at the #SOL2024 about #plant-plant communication under biotic and abiotic stresses in #tomato plants.

Michi Notaguchi bring us a wonderful presentation about the molecular mechanisms behind N. benthamiana interfamily grafting at the #SOL2024. Grafting is an old technique with more than 2,000 years. Amazingly benthamiana can graft with many different species including species from different families

Paula Teper-Bamnolker presents at the #SOL2024 her work about the use of vacular invertase mutants for #genome_editing in #potato.

Come back for lunch and ready for a presentation at #SOL2024 by Jieun Seo who will be presenting about the effect of índole-3-acetic acid in #seed_browning in #pepper under #cold stress.

Rahul Kumar follows at the #SOL2024 presenting his work about how the #myoinositol_phosphate synthase gene regulates #phosphate_homeostasis in #tomato seedlings.

Coming back from the coffee break at #SOL2024 with Pengxiang Fan. He talks about #acylsugar (AS) diversity and biosynthesis in #tomato. Wild tomatoes have a more AS complex profiles than cultivated ones, including long branched acylsugars (LbAS). Introduction of SpACS1 gene into tomato produces LbAS

Laura Shannon follows at the #biodiversity session at #SOL2024 talking about genome evolution in tetraploid potato. 4X potato has an extremely high diversity of alleles. An important part of this allele diversity comes from paralogs due CNV in addition to polyploidy. Not related with recombination.

Yellamaraju Sreelakshmi follows in the 2nd day at #SOL2024 presenting how an introgression with a dominant-negative allele of a #photropin gene (Nps1) enhances #carotenoid biosynthesis in RIN mutants. Introgressed Nps1xRIN present extended shelf life, high lycopene and high flavor volatiles content.

Luiz A. Cruz-Santos follows at #SOL2024 with a presentation about drought adaptation in the #Nicotiana Suaveolentes clade. Around 69 species have been described in this lineage. The ancestor of Australian nicotianas arrived to Pilbara mora than 2 MYA, an extremely drought region.

Giovanni Giuliano follows at the #SOL2024 talking about #eggplant_domestication. G2PSOL project allowed to collect genotypic and phenotypic data for thousands of #eggplant accessions. S. incanum (wild relative) center of diversity is Africa. S. melongena has 2 independent of domestication in Asia.

Pieter van’t Hof opens the #biodiversity session at the #SOL2024 as invited speaker presenting about the #rhizosphere #microbiome of wild #tomatoes in the #Galápagos Islands. Can we identify beneficial microbes from resistant tomatoes microbiomes? Looking into the centers of diversity is essential.

Kristina Gruden closes the #biotechnology session at #SOL2024 talking about a tool that they have developed, a #stress #knowledge_map. They model the biological knowledge into graphs where molecular entities are the nodes (e.g. genes) and relationship are the edges (e.g. regulation).

Hisashi Udagawa follows at the #SOL2024 with a presentation about a mutational database for #tobacco generated with EMS. 2019 lines were produced and sequenced by HiseqX. A ref. genome for the Tsukuba lines was also developed. ~240k mutations were detected per line. DB was created to store the data.

We switch to the #biotechnology session at the #SOL2024 with a presentation by Jae-Yean Kim who will be talking about precise #gene_editing in tomato. They have developed super-infective agrobacterium using ternary vector to increase % of transformation. HDR-GE technology is still challenging.

Prof. Ezura closes the session at the #SOL2024 describing the story of the first commercially grown #genetically_modified #tomato. This tomato has a high-GABA content, with several advantages such as increased resistance to some abiotic stress. GABA intake has health benefits according some studies.

Toon Suzuki continues after the coffee break at the #SOL2024 conference presenting the characterization of the high-GABA content #tomato. These tomatoes are stress resistant. GABA content increased even more with stress conditions.

Yoshihiro Okabe presents before the coffee break at the #SOL2024 about Pectate Lyase as a biotechnological target to improve tomato shelf-life. New varieties with mutations in the PL tomato shows interesting processing properties, specifically in post-harvest.

Marietheres Kleiter continues the #SOL2024 talking about the production of proteins in tomato leaves. We use tomato fruits for food, but could we use its leaves as protein source? Kleiter gives us some insights. Tomato protein profiles are complicate. Extraction depends if the protein type.

Soon Ju Park follows at the #SOL2024 presenting about crop improvement through #polyploid #genome_engineering. SP is a gene involved in tomato yield. S. nigrum is a #hexaploid solanum. CRISPR mutations on the different SP alleles has allows to study the effect of #gene_dosage in #yield.

Greg A. Howe opens the first session at the #SOL2024 with a presentation about #insect_resitance in tomatoes. He screened #tomato mutants for phenotypes for #wound-response. Some were affected in the JA pathway, including SlCOI1 mutant. Removing JAZ’s in Arabidopsis produce highly resistant plants.

#SOL2024 conference starts with a warming welcome speech by Prof. Ezura. We have in front of us four days of wonderful #science about #solanaceae in Tsukuba, Japan. From #tomatoes and #biotechnology to #peppers and #biodiversity.